Lifestream
by Calm77
Summary: Where does Cloud go when he's in Mako? Who does he see? Rather dark.
1. Chapter 1

LifeStream

Disclaimer: Why do I even bother? Really. Why? Habit, I suppose. Not mine.

A/N: Hey Silver Pard, this one's for you. Now I'll get back to working on Shocked. Really I will. Promise.

Mako is a volatile substance. Forever weaving and flowing, even when contained it's a thing of movement. Cloud wonders if it needs to move, to lose itself in the routine of constant momentum.

Stillness gives you time to think, to process, to accept. To feel. Maybe the constant momentum is like the cacophony of voices Mako produces – easy to lose oneself in. Easy to disappear. If you can disappear then you can ignore everything. Past, present, future.

For Cloud it's impossible to ignore those voices. They hook into him and pull, each wanting a piece of solidness, something tangible, for themselves.

Even in the Lifestream people are still selfish. (How fitting, part of him says.)

A piece of something to hold on to is what they want. Something so they can remember who they were and why they're moving. After so long even the reason has been forgotten. Anything that falls into the writhing green mass is fair game. Selfishness will rip it apart.

It's like being drawn and quartered only many times over, the pulling is everywhere. Cloud can feel the holes appearing in his psyche, knows his mind is ripping apart bit by bit. Knows there is nothing he can do to stop it, no matter how hard he fights it will only be a delaying action.

He can feel it try to disintegrate his flesh too. Or perhaps he's simply doing that himself. What the mind harbors the body reveals. It would explain so much. The more in touch the mind is with the body the more it hurts, the faster you die. He's never been trained to divorce himself from it, he can only embrace it.

Sometimes (not days, there is no day here in the lab. He hasn't seen sunlight in so long) he wonders if fighting's worth it. Probably isn't, he decides, but anything is better than just giving up. Something to do.To hold on to. He needs things to hold onto, he has so little left.

Ignoring the voices is impossible, at least for Cloud. But if you brave the impossible, if you make it beyond them, then the Lifestream is a surprisingly peaceful place. A surprisingly empty place.

Postcards and paintings show places like this. Delicate moss covered trees surrounded by flowers just before sunrise. Towering pines and old oaks running up to ruins of something that might have once been a church (cathedral his mind says) or a castle. Maybe both. The silence is all-encompassing. Cloud thinks he is the only living (Is he alive?) thing there.

He wonders if it's the Promised Land and then prays it isn't. This beautiful, empty forest where not even birds sing frightens him. Rather the voices, the movement than so much _nothing_.

But he can't lose himself enough anymore. Can't embrace the pain enough(Or has he embraced it too much?) to ignore the present. Zack is still floating in another tube, Hojo is still poking and prodding. His_ everything_ is still gone and nothing he can do will bring it back.

The Mako in his tube moves so much it's tiring just to watch. But if you're tired enough then nothing else matters, you don't need to think you're lonely or in pain, broken or damned. He watches as much as he can, tries to absorb some of the exhaustion.

Then the voices are back, calling all sorts of garbled things, some still aware enough to know who they are. Most simply calling the same thing because they've been calling for as long as they can remember and there must've been a reason, a good reason, even if they've forgotten it. Then they forget they've forgotten and the cycle starts again.

The more he listens the more he realizes the forest and the voices, the silence and the chaos, are all the same. The method is different but the end is the same. To forget, to be nothing. To empty themselves and _let go_.

The thought of it makes him hang on all the harder.

Even when he was younger (He's still young now isn't he? Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen – how old is he, how long has he been here? -is too young for this) he never wanted to be everything. The thought itself is ridiculous, was even then. But to be _nothing_, that terrifies him.

Through Mako the world is tinted green. Not the healthy green of grass or trees, but the sickly glowing green he's never elsewhere in nature. The closest color is the eyes of some cats but even those never get it quite right. Should've been the first sign that Sephiroth wasn't natural, those Mako green eyes.

Cloud wonders if Sephiroth saw the world through this sickly tint. The thought is violently cast away, his body shuddering. It's too soon, too soon to think of the General, too soon. Those thoughts remind him of the pain, the flames, where he is now, and what he's lost. It'll always be too soon to think of the General anymore.

When his thoughts stray in that direction he calls out to the voices, to be louder, to drown out his mind. Add one more rip in his already damaged psyche.

Jenova didn't come like you'd think. She didn't hurl down his defenses and rape his mind. No, that dubious honor was reserved for Sephiroth later (Was it Sephiroth? Does it matter?). She was a quiet song, different and discordant compared to the cacophony of the Lifestream. Soothing in her own way, strangely dissonant at the same time (Maybe time unbalanced her too. Later he'll realize the dissonance reeked of madness).

A poor boy from a small town who'd gone to the big city, Cloud knew when things were too good to be true (especially now, especially now). She promised the stars and her voice became terrible the louder she got. Like the rain on a pole barn he'd worked in when younger. Pleasant when soft but when the downpour hit it became deafening and painful.

Sound is muted through Mako. Cloud thinks of it like swimming, but it's not the same. Water mutes all sounds, muffles everything. Mako randomly sharpens some, brings Zack's quiet knocking into his ears while completely muting the mutterings of the lab assistants (He'd kill them all if he could, no matter if the redhead has a twin sister with leukemia who needs the treatment only Hojo can provide. If the blond is kind enough to slip them some extra food when Hojo isn't looking. They know and do nothing. He hates them for it.).

The tubes are completely clear and very strong. They haven't been out of them for so long. It's a small blessing, for the Mako makes them so sensitive getting out is the worst form of torture. He's been here long enough to realize Hojo isn't a sadist, he doesn't take joy in pain. He simply doesn't understand it. The lack of empathy is more frightening. At least a sadist feels, takes joy in his work. Hojo isn't even that.

Zack used to tell stories when they were in the cells, tales of his girlfriend, from Wutai. Even about Sephiroth. Anything to think of better days. He thinks of Zack, hopes he can escape. Hojo is more interested in Cloud, and lately he's been ignoring the Gongagan man completely.

He's not there anymore, can't take it anymore (How long has he been there? How long? It feels like years but he doesn't know anymore). Now he's climbing about the ruins, away from Jenova, from the voices (He's seeing the history of the Planet herself he'll realize later. Seeing ruins long destroyed.).

Living in Nibelheim hadn't been easy. The area is rife with wolves and dragons. Any resident needed to know survival skills, tracking, hunting, and trapping. Cloud isn't any different. His mother could tell a doe from a buck from foot prints alone.

If it wasn't for those skills he'd never realize he was being followed now.

Review 'cause I'm not done with this one yet. I think.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: You think I own this? Go take your meds.

A/N: I think this could be a fun one. Everyone enjoy, alright?

Panic comes first, the sudden realization of just how helpless humans are. How thin skin is, how nails are no substitute for claws. Humans are fragile things, needing armor and weapons to defend themselves. Cloud is keenly aware he has neither.

Boot prints are following him, that he's sure of now. The circles he's been traveling in are the best way to not get lost .

(How can he get more lost than he is now? He doesn't even know how he got here wherever here is)

The prints didn't mean much at first. In this empty place where the wind doesn't blow and the quiet is practically a living presence snarling to not be disturbed who knew when those tracks were made? A year ago, ten years ago, yesterday?

He's never wished for a compass more in his life and he _hated_ orienteering. It feels like he's been going in circles for hours, how far does this forest go? The woods all look the same, maybe those tracks might lead somewhere.

(Anywhere)

Where they came from he doesn't know but when his own smaller bare prints start getting swallowed up by the large stamp of a boot, when _his_ tracks are the ones deciding the way then Cloud knows he's in deep shit.

All those self-defense techniques won't help him now, not when he doesn't know where the man is, what he has, or why he's following an unarmed _boy_. By now naïve is something Cloud isn't and its not hard to think the worst of people anymore. Cloud _knows _whoever the watcher is, he can't (no girl he's ever known had boots that big) be friendly.

The panic is overwhelming. Some living thing has moved into his abdomen, struggling and twisting like a moth trying to free itself from a chrysalis.

(When he looks down it's a surprise to see his stomach looks the same and nothing is visibly trying to claw its way out.)

Cloud is used to the helplessness of the labs but there he never had the _chance _to fight, to realize how easily damaged he is. Fragility is still new to Cloud, strange and foreign but he's beginning to realize how terrifyingly true it is.

(He could break. Like a piece of his mother's china. Just like that.)

Here there's no Sephiroth to kill the dragon in one stroke. Or kill Tifa in one stroke.

(Shut up shut up shut up don't think about it, not _now._)

The prints are army boots. The man is probably tall, giving him at least a height advantage. Probably armed as well. Part of his mind might be screaming in panic, hyperventilating and urging him _run_ and _ hide, _but another part is watching everything from a safe distance. The world is in sharp, clear, cold focus. What he can do – break off a sharp branch, head to whatever those ruins are, set up an ambush if he can – what he must do to survive is logically laid out like its the most obvious thing in the world. It doesn't actually feel like he's really there, more like this is a scene from somewhere and he's watching it distantly.

The safety of this distance is only in his head (Is it his head inside his head?) but he needs it right now. Needs to not stop moving. If he stops then the hysteria _will_ set in, he'll be a helpless bundle of fright, an easy target for whoever's following him.

He'll be damned before he's an easy target. Everything else he can't control but the little scrap he can he'll cling to no matter what.

(All he has left.)

The looking around for whatever he could use led him to the ball. A small red ball like the one he had a lifetime ago.

- Hey, we're going to be late for dinner if you don't hurry! Mom'll be worried. -

He practically leapt out of his skin. A boy is standing there, a few feet behind the ball. A small boy with spiky blond hair.

Its a face he's very familiar with, no matter how young it is. Cloud is sure he's lost his mind now, sure this is some sick dream and he almost wants to go back to the labs, back to the burning, at least he's pretty sure that's _real. _

The boy he's looking at is himself, at the age of ten.

He doesn't faint, but it's a close thing.

Review? Maybe there'll be more?


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